Whathecarried.
Uther lurched between Corvin and Lance, his weight dragging at them despite the tatters he’d reduced himself to. Once he'd filled a throne with sheer presence. Now he hung in their grip like a scarecrow, all jutting bone and fevered eyes, lips moving with a constant, broken mutter.
“…fire… fire in the bones… I am the storm, I am the storm…”
His voice rasped over the words, each syllable chewed by something that wasn’t entirely human. The dragon pulsed underhis skin, a flicker of heat in the night, an ember glowing in the hollow of his throat. Every so often, that ember flared and his eyes went bright—too bright—like molten gold forced into a human vessel.
I forced myself not to look away.
If I could not bear to see what the dragon had done to him, I had no right to ask what I was about to ask.
The clearing opened before us, a circle of flattened earth ringed by stones half-sunk in moss and something red that I was fairly certain was blood. Blodeuwyn had raised the wards already. I could feel them as we crossed the invisible threshold—a prickling, a pressing, the sensation of stepping through a curtain that wasn’t there and yet somehow resisted.
The stones themselves were nothing grand. Old granite, rough and lichen-streaked, leaning inward ever so slightly. What made them terrible was not their shape but the sigils carved into their faces. They crawled in sickly green light, each line and curve shifting when I tried to look directly at them. Runes older than Logres, older than dragons, older perhaps than the names of gods.
Blodeuwynn stood in the center of the circle, bare feet sunk in the dirt, her dark hair loose about her shoulders like a mantle of shadow. Her eyes were the only calm thing in that clearing—green and clear and cold as deep water. She wore no crown and no ring, no sign of court or status. Power itself was her only adornment. And she was exactly that—powerful. Perhaps even more so than Merlin.
“You are late,” she said, without heat, her voice carrying in the charged air.
“Your forest slowed us,” Merlin replied, glaring at her. It was no secret that the wizened old wizard didn't trust the witch. But it was also no secret that his power wasn't enough—we needed her. “It does not welcome Pendragons.”
“It remembers what came before them.” Her gaze slid to Uther, and the faintest edge of distaste touched her mouth. “Bring him.”
Corvin and Lance dragged Uther to the very center of the circle, within a smaller ring of chalk and blood and ash. The stench of it coiled in my nose—iron and incense and something crisp and acrid, like lightning caught in a bottle.
Uther fought them then, all at once, a wild, convulsive thrashing that tore a snarl from his shredded throat. It was the most physical power he'd revealed in days.
"Hold him!" Blodeuwynn snapped.
Lance's arms locked around Uther's chest from behind. Corvin seized his wrists, forcing them down. Between them, my father bucked and twisted, frothing at the mouth like a rabid animal.
He'd stopped eating days ago. Refused water. Refused even broth. The physician had examined him that morning, pulling me aside with a grim shake of his head.Hours, my lord. He'll be fortunate to see dusk.
That was why we were here now, in this gods-forsaken clearing, with wards crawling across stone and my father thrashing between us like a creature already half-corpse.
Uther couldn't die. Not yet.
Not with the dragon still coiled in his ribs.
If he died with that thing still bound to him, the beast would tear free in its final throes. It would consume whatever remained of his flesh, burst forth in flame and fury, and burn Camelot to ash before anyone could stop it. Then it would come for Logres and beyond.
Merlin had explained it to me in cold, clipped words. Blodeuwynn had confirmed it with a single nod.
The dragon had to beremovedfirst.
Transferred.
"Now," Blodeuwynn said, stepping forward with a blade in her hand.
“No,” Uther hissed, understanding dawning in his expression. “No, not from me. You cannot— I am king. I am—”
The ember in his throat flared white-hot, his veins lighting under his skin like molten lines being poured into a mold. Merlin cursed under his breath, words in a tongue no human mother had ever taught.
“Hold him,” I said.
Blodeuwynn’s gaze moved from Uther to me.
“You understand what you ask.” Not a question. A pronouncement.
